Well, that’s not quite what he said, but what are we to make of his statement regarding the rioting in Gaza over freakin’ cartoons (for initial coverage of the cartoons, go here):

[he] condemned the caricatures, saying they “provoke all Muslims everywhere in the world.” He asked gunmen not to attack foreigners, “but we warn that emotions may flare in this very sensitive issues.”

Sure I could ask the GUNMEN not to attack innocent people whose only fault is they happen to have the same nationality as a the guy who made these comics, but you see, we have these pesky things called emotions, and these “emotions” may flare, and when they flare we cannot control ourselves and are forced to do things like make death threats and threaten kidnappings. Hey don’t get mad at me – it’s in the Koran!!

You may remember a story from last week regarding the Bush administration’s attempts to get porno querying habits from search engine companies like Yahoo, MSN and Google. (Full disclosure: don’t waste time trying to track me down; Quinto uses the search string “thai+asian+slut” regularly and often. What’s the matter? So I like the Asian girls, sue me.) Yahoo and MSN complied and Google told the feds to get bent:

Google on Thursday rebuffed the Bush administration’s attempt in federal court to force it to hand over search-engine data on millions of customers. The Justice Department asked a federal judge in San Jose on Wednesday for an order to turn over the records as part of the adminstration’s efforts to revive a controversial online pornography law. The issue is expected to be resolved by March. Google has already refused to comply with a subpoena, issued in August, to turn over a mountain of material, including all requests entered into Google’s search engine from any one-week period and 1 million randomly selected websites from Google databases. Rival search engines Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN have cooperated with the government. But Google, the world’s largest search engine, opposes releasing the information because it says that doing so would reveal trade secrets and that the information requested is not relevant to the government’s case.

BTW, this is one of those issues that drives me batty with the Republican party. Can’t we leave this BS nanny state stuff to the Democrats? Oh no, there’s porn to be found on the Internet! So what! Let parents do their jobs and stay out of people’s lives with this stuff.

I’ve been working out during the day for the last couple of months and as such, I am forced to watch the always craptacular examples of what passes for daytime television these days. I’m usually on the elyptical for a hour or so in front of three tv’s and the programming tends to be a mix of the following: The View, various court tv shows, Maury Povich, local news at noon, Millionaire and various soap operas.

In the latest scourge of uber-paranoid – we’re five minutes away from the evil fascist BushMcHaliburton Hitler police state – mindset, we have this doozy of a story from Yahoo. It almost seems that it was lifted verbatim from The Onion with its feigned alarmist nature and shades of Sauron returning to his rule. What am I talking about you ask? Well, it seems that the current capitol of the Fourth Reich, aka the White House has a, *gasp* STAT TRACKER on its website, http://www.whitehouse.gov. Give me a second…I have to clear my throat to properly give you my reaction.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! WE DIDN’T LISTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE WERE WARNED, BUT WE DIDN’T LISTEN!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU HEAR THAT NOISE?!?! THAT IS THE SOUND OF THOUSANDS OF JACK BOOTS MARCHING IN THEIR FASCIST FORMATION!!!!!!!!!

Ahhh. I feel better now. Seriously, WTF? Does the author of this article even own a computer? Just because this article appears online doesn’t mean that they know what the internet is. Forgive me if I assume the voice of an indignant Allen Iverson, but “a stat tracker? a STAT tracker?? c’mon man, we are talking about a stat tracker??”

I don’t know why we even bother continuing this fight for indeed, the terrorists have already won.